Episode 101: I Hope My Kids Never Evolve

[Yossarian]

The best part is that back in the 50's you could actually buy monkeys by sending away for those ads in the back of comic books. Wiretap did a story on that a month or two ago.

[transatlanticalien]

I spent a good part of this episode laughing sadly
I think exotic pets are really cool as long as you know how to, you know, take care of them
Animal neglect on any level's a sad thing but there's an extra level of sad to a creature being imported halfway around the world only to have half its teeth knocked out
just collect plushies instead you broken and stupid people

But still the woman talking about her depression not being fixed by a monkey was like a horrifying glimpse into my own future, I mean that is me 20 years down the line- crying to the internet surrounded by empty beer cans and animal poop

Also I drew a thing

[Yossarian]

Is episode 100 on delay until you can figure out how to wrap a podcast completely in ?

[Keetah Spacecat]

This episode angered me a lot. I'm for animal welfare and why the fuck would you take away a monkey from it's mother at 2 weeks old. And at the person that nearly got that poor monkey's mouth removed because it was frustrated that her owner was trying to force her to be a human.

Overall this episode made me feel sad that stupid people keep buying animals they can't care for. Especially monkeys since they are easily traumatized.

[Delcat]

Thank you, Al and Alien, as soon as Back Alley Dave started talking I started wanting fanart.  Glorious.

While the animal abuse parts are hard to listen to, this is definitely being filed under "Things That Make Me Feel Better About My Place In Life".  Usually when I worry about money, I console myself that I don't have any credit card debt.  Now I can put a further shine on it by consoling myself that I'm not nearly two thousand bucks in the hole purely from buying monkey dresses.

My personal level of "things I'd like to have but don't have the capacity in my current situation to take care of" goes like this, in escalating order of difficulty:

Dog
Ferret
Aquarium
Boyfriend
Marine aquarium

I don't know how anyone's reasoning can not only shoot a monkey to the bottom of that list, but believe that it would help with their situation.  Who the hell self-medicates with a fucking wild animal?

I have to go watch a bunch of Fatal Attractions on Animal Planet now.  Maybe that one where the idiot was teasing their "pet" lion or wolf or similar large predator by offering it meat and pulling it away and lost an arm in the process.  Shit, man, you don't even do that with dogs.

[fruit power]

This is what wild animals do. They are not pets. They don't even want you taking their picture!

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/fisherman-killed-beaver-belarus-article-1.1314673
" Belarussian fisherman was savagely bitten by this beaver after going up close to try and take its picture. The beaver severed an artery and the unnamed victim reportedly bled to death."

[Delcat]

Now, some people would be perfectly happy to be beavered to death.

reckon you can punch me for that one but SOMEONE was gonna say it gdi

ETA: good God what a 500th post

[PurpleXVI]

I have to admit this is one of those episodes where I find it hard to believe you guys weren't making up half this shit. It's just.

It's just what the fuck.

[montrith]

Question time! You are a person who owns a monkey. For some reason, you really, really want to get another monkey. However, you are lacking the funds to purchase and provide for the needs of said new monkey. What should you do?

a) Forget the whole thing and concentrate on taking care of the animal you already have
b) Start saving up until you have enough to buy a monkey and to take care of it
c) Go to every single bank you know and beg them to lend you a few thousand dollars for a monkey

Guess which option Lia choose?

[STOG]

Question time! You are a person who owns a monkey. For some reason, you really, really want to get another monkey. However, you are lacking the funds to purchase and provide for the needs of said new monkey. What should you do?

a) Forget the whole thing and concentrate on taking care of the animal you already have
b) Start saving up until you have enough to buy a monkey and to take care of it
c) Go to every single bank you know and beg them to lend you a few thousand dollars for a monkey

Guess which option Lia choose?

She sounds like she's going to be a homeless monkey person.

She'll be covered in four trenchcoats to cover up all the monkey bites, and wherever she goes she will be reviled because her malnourished monkeys are going to be very badly behaved.

[Isfahan]

It's certainly no coincidence that all of the ladies read in this episode have crazy issues and go through manic-depressive episodes where buying a monkey gives a high and then the reality of owning a monkey sends them into a horrible low. It's seriously like a drug-abuse cycle, only they're hurting living creatures other than themselves and it involves the strange twisting of maternal instincts we see in a lot of misguided pet ownership.

The use of parent-child language when it comes to the owner-pet relationship always rubbed me the wrong way, and this episode is the first good illustration of why that I could theoretically level at people.

[Adam Bozarth]

I really felt bad for the woman whom God turned His back on, because she had certainly run out of options as well as being given up by her family. But someone has to have told her that a monkey-child is a bad idea. Me personally, I soothe myself from God's eternal scorn by indulging in drugs, alcohol, and Fallout 3.

I think the moral of this episode is just to get a dog instead. You can still dress up a dog and they will love you forever.

BACK-ALLEY DAVE 4 LIFE

[One Of The Crappy Pokemon That Nobody Likes]

People owning wild animals because it's "cute" is fucking disgusting. You know that Youtube video of a slow loris holding an umbrella?

Yeah, see, you can't breed lorises in captivity. It's pretty fucking difficult. You know what isn't difficult though? Taking a baby out of its tree while its mother's out foraging. So guess which one these "breeders" actually do.

Lorises are purely nocturnal. They do not function well when you completely flip their sleeping schedule, and stress can easily lead to a ton of disorders. They're the only toxic primate though, so you'd think people would avoid keeping them as pets, right? Nah, no worries, just pull their fucking teeth out with wire cutters. Not by a surgeon of any kind of course, since smuggling's crazy illegal. Just you know, grab this animal and pull its teeth out. It'll probably die on the way to its new home anyway so eh, who gives a shit.

A lot of these cute pet primates were taken from their parents when they were way too young, which causes severe psychological damage to them. If the poachers find the parents along with the baby, they'll just kill the parents. Because eh, the parent might, you know, bite you when you try to take its baby for some reason.

Dogs and cats have been specially bred to live with us. Primates aren't. They don't want to wear clothes. They don't want to stay in your tiny, filthy house. They can be violent fucking animals, especially when they've been stressed out and psychologically abused repeatedly. Hell, even fucking zookeepers don't trust a primate to not wig out on them, and they actually know what they're doing. Whenever a "tame" primate freaks out, the owners act so fucking surprised. Yeah, it's almost as if it's a highly intelligent wild fucking animal.

Goddamn I hate people.

[Keetah Spacecat]

It really disturbs me because yes, Primates are our evolutionary bros. They feel the same emotions we do. So why the fuck do people think it's okay to rip a baby away from it's mother, and then have the goddamn gall to be surprised that it acts out because it never got to learn society cues from other primates, so they go insane.

I'd say that people that get mauled by monkeys deserve it, but most of these people are trailer trash types with children. So lets bring child endangerment into the picture shall we.

And the horrifying thing is people amputating finger tips to keep them from scratching and cut off their tails so you can force them into a diaper easier.

There has to be a special level of hell for these people.

[count_actuala]

It really disturbs me because yes, Primates are our evolutionary bros. They feel the same emotions we do. So why the fuck do people think it's okay to rip a baby away from it's mother, and then have the goddamn gall to be surprised that it acts out because it never got to learn society cues from other primates, so they go insane.

Because they're fuckin' deranged and many have been rightly denied the opportunity to inflict themselves on human children so they turn to animals as an alternative.